Happy Birthday PBA Commissioner Chito Salud : Let's All Greet Him

He is the 8th PBA Commissioner and in his stint as the commissioner he established the PBA D-League and he established the said league to help make a more organized playing fround for Filipino players, His name is Angelico T. Salud. He is popularly known as Chito Salud. He is a lawyer who finished his Bachelors of Law degree from the UP Law School.

Chito Salud is the son of the Former PBA Commissioner Rudy Salud. He has it in his genes to be the next PBA Commissioner. He was eventually named as the PBA commissioner Last August 2010. He replaced commissioner Sonny Barrios. He was born on June 17, 19**. I don't want to divulge his exact age. It is his birthday today. Let's all greet him Happy Birthday and More Power!

I made this article because I'd like to make the PBA fans know the story of his life and because I also believe that he will be a legendary PBA commissioner in the near future.

To give you more idea on what's the story of our current PBA commissioner, here's an article from Manila Bulletin. This is also a form of tribute to our Commissioner.

Grateful family returns a favor
By TITO TALAO
August 24, 2007, 8:00am

HE BEARS the unmistakable imprint of his father’s infectious smile and the glint in his eyes. And he essays the subtle, sudden, ever shifting moves of his illustrious sire when engaging in conversation, stressing a point or recalling a funny incident.

But it’s the voice — rich, deep and warm, and quick burst of laughter — hearty, resonant and loud, which gives him away.

Thirty-two years after founding PBA commissioner Leo Prieto brought with him to serve as his counsel a lawyer named Rodrigo Salud, another legal eagle bearing the same name and functioning in much the same capacity is holding office at the heart of professional sports in the country.

And filling the small, bare, cream-painted room he occupies with ringing laughter riding the crest of a booming voice.

Angelico ‘Chito’ Salud, 45, is picking up where his father has left off, from helping PBA officer-in-charge Sonny Barrios chart the course of the league — in the transition period between the 6th and 7th commissioner — to welcoming unscheduled visitors like long lost friends.

"Six months. That’s what Tito Sonny (Barrios) said when he asked me to help him if ever he would get named OIC," Salud says. "So I’m here to help him."

At no cost to the league.

"Pareho lang naman kami ni Tito Sonny," he says, flashing a dimpled smile.

Salud, who finished law school at University of the Philippines, says he felt compelled to say yes to Barrios out of gratitude to the PBA

."It’s not the money but the respect my family got because of the PBA," he says. "And the amount of goodwill it generated for us from people we don’t even know."

The elder Salud, a man of charismatic leadership and persuasive charm, served as commissioner from 1988 to 1991.

He turned over the PBA reins to former Shell president Rey Marquez but continued to wield a fair amount of influence in the legal, political, corporate and sporting world up until his semi-retirement after suffering a heart attack in 2000.

Attorney Chito, the eldest of three boys and four girls, says he was able to obtain from his father his blessing to take on the consultancy post, but not through his influence.

"My father told me that he won’t make or take any calls to help me get the job. That I had to get it on my own. In fairness, he really didn’t."

The younger Salud was offered the directorship of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas early this year but turned it down.

"I had too much on my plate when the SBP offer came," he says. "I was working in government back then, but I resigned to take over the projects of my father when he had a stroke last year. I was also taking on tax cases."

Barrios’ invitation came at the perfect time.

"I was free from much of my earlier commitments," says the father of four boys, all Ateneo students like him.

The possibility of returning to the PBA also stirred up something nostalgic in him, a long ago summer that he had cherished since he was 12 and in grade school.

"I was one of the PBA’s first ball boys," he laughs at the disclosure. Back in 1975, the late Pepito Castro, Prieto’s chief operations man, saw him watching games with his father and asked him if he wanted a summer job.

"I jumped at the chance and became a ball boy! They gave me an I.D. and I went to every game that summer," Salud says.

The family driver would deliver him to the game venue — the Araneta Coliseum, Rizal Memorial or Ateneo — and then pick him at the end of the second game.

"They paid me R30 per game and R60 for the two games! Can you imagine how much that was back then?" he says, adding "Come to think of it, I actually saw the development of the PBA.

Chito Salud has come a long way since those ball boy days.

Whereas before when he could only watch from up close the growth of the league from infancy, wiping leather balls and bouncing them over to the referees, he now has a hand in putting the finishing touches to a full-grown sport spectacle which his father had helped nurture with great care.

"Yes, I will be here everyday. That is my commitment to tito Sonny," says Salud, taking a break from reviewing a thick wad of papers covering the policies and procedures of officiating in the PBA.

"And right now, I’m reviewing the referees’ performances with the end view of having officiating that is fair, honest, competent and consistent."

There was no laughter in his statement. No glint in his eye. No sudden body movements.

Yet the commitment in his voice, and the promise behind his words, resonate with familiarity as though they were spoken decades ago, and even unto now, by a man who cared with a passion for the league and who kept its flames burning in his heart, and that of his eldest child, for the last 32 years.